Antony Barnett writes about the issues raised in his Dispatches film, The Truth About Drugs in Football.
Football is supposed to be the beautiful game. But when it comes to drugs, how clean is our national sport? With cycling and athletics frequently embroiled in drug scandals, football appears to have escaped relatively lightly.
When it emerged that Manchester City defender Kolo Toure tested positive for a banned substance in March, Dispatches decided to have a closer look at how the game deals with the issue of drugs. Were fans really getting a true picture of drug taking in football?
Like all athletes who fail a drugs tests Toure claimed it wasn't really his fault. He blamed a medical that made him unhappy with his body which made him reach for his wife's diet pills.
He didn't know, he claimed, they contained a substance banned by the World Anti Doping Agency because it can be used as a masking agent to conceal doping.
Toure's version of events was accepted by the Football Association and instead of a possible two year ban, Toure was banned for six months.
Last weekend the defender was back on the bench for City's game against Wigan. Most in the football world seemed satisfied with the outcome convinced that their sport is clean and Toure is not the type of guy to dope.
But as one of our contributors put it: would there have been a similar level of acceptance if Toure was a cyclist or an athlete?
We managed to obtain an internal email from UK Anti Doping - the body that carries out drug testing for the FA - which suggests they believed the ban was 'weak' but decided not to publicly challenge it. Why was this? We don't know.
As we begun our investigation, it quickly became clear how difficult it was to get information from those in the footballing world. I have been involved in investigations into politics, business and extremist groups but few subjects have been harder to get people to talk about than football and drugs.
The FA say they take the issue of drugs very seriously and claim to have a first-rate drug testing system. Yet they seemed unwilling to answer even the most basic questions.
For instance, how many Premiership players had they tested last season or how many drug tests had been carried out after Premiership matches. Their line seems to be any information might be of use to dope cheats.
But as David Howman, the director general of WADA, told us there should be no reason why they don't provide this information, otherwise it leads to the suspicion they are trying to hide something.
Unlike in Italy, where two players from every team are tested after every Serie A match, it seems players can go years without being tested. We sent out a survey to 2800 professional players and 700 responded. This revealed that 28% of players, including 11 Premiership players, had not been tested in the past two years.
The FA did tell us they conducted more than 1400 drug tests last season, more than any other sport. But this is misleading as there are more footballers than any other sports. One expert told us that on average a player gets tested once every two to three years, as opposed to track and field athletes who get tested a number of times every season.
We found other problems with the testing regime. Using the Freedom of Information Act to uncover information from UK Anti Doping, we discovered that 240 drug tests had to be abandoned in the three years to 2010 because players were not present, and this included several Premiership and Championship level clubs.
But just because there might be flaws in the testing regime, does that mean players are taking drugs? Well, according to the chief executive of Sporting Chance, the addiction clinic that treats footballers, the answer is yes.
Peter Kay told us he knew several players who used steroids and actually treated a player who was addicted to steroids under pressure to obtain the right body shape.
We decided to look at all drugs tested for by the FA, including cocaine. Although cocaine might be regarded as a recreational drug, experts told us that it could also affect performance. The FA itself admits that one reason it tests for social drugs is they can lead to injuries through 'misjudged tackles'.
It was during our research into the drugs tests for cocaine that we made our first surprise discovery. There are dozens of players who fail drugs tests and are subsequently banned by the FA, yet the identity of the players are kept secret.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the FA wouldn't tell us who these players were, the clubs they played for or even division they played in. But we had a lucky breakthrough and obtained a document giving us the name of 43 players who had been banned from playing after failing a drugs test for cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy.
Most of these names had never been made public. We wanted to know what fans thought and a number of vox pops outside grounds made it clear that the vast majority wanted clubs to name and shame players who they found taking drugs.
It also appeared that clubs buying players who failed drugs tests were not told by the selling club. This could be very important for the buying club because a player testing positive a second time could face a much lengthier ban.
The FA told us that it makes a distinction between drugs tests on a matchday, and those on other days such as midweek training. These are called out-of-competition tests and when it comes to social drugs these are not covered by the world anti-doping code. They argue this means they do not have to name the player, and believe it's best to keep names private to help players' rehabilitation.
We also managed to get documents that revealed details of 15 footballers who had been investigated for potential doping as a result of suspiciously elevated levels of testosterone in their urine. Some of these were former England internationals. All of the players were subsequently cleared, but details of the tests and identities of the players were never made public.
Our documents revealed these players' names but, for legal reasons, we chose not to identify them. Yet our investigation did throw up questions about this process, in particular whether these players were cleared prematurely.
The doping authorities are looking for what is known as a 'raised t/e ratio'. This is the ratio between two related hormones: testosterone and epitestosterone. In the vast majority of people this ratio should be 1:1. If this t/e ratio goes above 4:1 then the world's doping bodies believe this is suspicious and suggests doping.
All the 15 players were investigated as a result of their urine showing t/e ratios above 4:1. Experts told us that some people have a naturally occurring t/e ratio of more than 4:1 and that is why UK Anti Doping carry out further tests on a player, known as a longitudinal study.
The thinking is this: if a player has a naturally occurring t/e ratio of greater than 4:1 then it should remain at that level. If a player is doping then this should swing. The World Anti Doping Agency guidelines say that for male athletes a swing of 30% should be permitted. Our documents revealed that five players had variations outside WADA guidelines, but all were cleared.
We know that in the case of one League One player the head of the Drug Control Centre, Professor David Cowan, had sufficient concerns to want to see extra tests carried out before the footballer was given the all-clear - but these don't seem to have happened.
The FA insist they follow the code of all sports when it comes to investigating raised testosterone levels. Once again, there could be possible biological explanations for these abnormal readings, but with the process being kept secret, it's impossible to know for sure.
